Korridorium

♫ Jólag­jöf ♫

21/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. 24 little doors. Behind the last one, a piece of cho­co­late awaits me. I alre­ady know that from the past few years.

♫ Inside the Temple of Braga ♫

22/398

„I enter the cor­ri­dor just like ever­yone else,“ said the Mas­ter to his visi­tor, who had asked how he might find his way through life.

„Are you, then, a see­ker like me?“ the visi­tor fur­ther inqui­red.

But the Mas­ter shook his head. „The path forks; there are many pas­sa­ges to choose from—​long, short, straight, sharp-tur­ning, lea­ding up and down stairs—and most end in dead ends.“

„That is pre­cis­ely the trou­ble,“ the visi­tor lamen­ted. „In this laby­rinth, I can­not find my way.“

Once again, the Mas­ter shook his head. „Laby­rinth? That would be a sin­gle, win­ding pas­sage that leads to the cen­ter through many loops, but wit­hout any bran­ches. What you are describ­ing is a maze.“

The visi­tor hesi­ta­ted. „And how, then, do I find my way through the maze?“

For a third time, the Mas­ter shook his head and repea­ted, „I enter the cor­ri­dor just like ever­yone else.“ Then he smi­led. „But beneath my steps, the maze trans­forms into a laby­rinth.“

♫ Smṛti ♫

23/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. But don’t assume that I just slip in and out quickly. No. I take my time. Initi­ally, I make sure not to read any words, not even acci­den­tally. Ins­tead, I start the sound­track and lis­ten to it with half-clo­sed eyes. Then, when I’ve deve­lo­ped a feel for the sounds, wit­hout eva­lua­ting or cate­go­ri­zing them, with a beg​in​ner’s mind­set, so to speak, I dare to take a first look at the tex​t—at the first words, the first sen­tence.

Is it the one I expect? Yes. The begin­ning is always the same. Nice. Car­ried by the accom­pany­ing music, I ven­ture fur­ther down the cor­ri­dor. Con­fi­dent on one hand, but also a bit fear­ful because around every bend, an unna­med ter­ror may lurk.

Yet, as in a dream, all mis­for­tune will be mere ima­gi­na­tion. Slowly and with delight, I feel my way for­ward, explo­ring cau­tiously. Most cor­ri­dors are short, much too short. Some­ti­mes, howe­ver, they con­ti­nue within me, before my min​d’s eye, in the rhythm of the accom­pany­ing music and the flow of my thoughts and fee­lings. The first step is always the same. But all the others…

The sound­track fades away. I open my eyes. And step into life.

♫ Upp­göt­vun ♫

24/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. This is where we agreed to meet, should we lose each other. And sure enough: the urn is on the win­dows­ill.

♫ The Camp­fire Lizards ♫

25/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor.

[Notes for the trans­la­tor:

The sen­tence with which ever­y­thing beg­ins is a lipo­gram exclu­ding the let­ter A. Simi­lar lipo­grams include:

• text 5 (exclu­ding E),
• text 9 (exclu­ding I),
• text 15 (exclu­ding O),
• text 21 (exclu­ding U)

and finally text 25, exclu­ding the last of the vowels.]

♫ Enmes­hed in Clouds (Wood­stock Mix) ♫

26/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. A lively bustle reigns here. A woman in colorful, flowing robes greets me with a smile and a kiss on the fore­head. She leads me to her fri­ends, who are gathe­red with some child­ren around a fire, sin­ging, dancing, and roas­ting marsh­mal­lows. I cle­arly please other women in the group as well. They feel me, nestle against me, and weave flowers into my hair. As I try to move on, one of them pulls me to the ground and offers me a smol­de­ring little roll of paper. The cor­ri­dor door​s—I see now—have been pain­ted with fan­tasy worlds, man­da­las, and flo­ral gar­lands.

I pro­mi­sed my peo­ple I would not halt my search until I reco­vered the Tjurunga, wit­hout which our shaman is power­less. And yet: Can I not lin­ger for a moment to reco­ver from the rigors of the trek? Per­haps I should learn the lan­guage of these peo­ple and find out what awaits me at the end of the cor​ri​dor—and behind the many doors they haven’t ope­ned in years, deca­des, or per­haps ever. The cheerful mood of these peo­ple is infec­tious. Yes, I’ll stay. I nod to the women, let­ting them know I accept their kind invi­ta­tion. Per­haps I will find the Tjurunga here among them after all. A wave of diz­ziness washes over me from all the new impres­si­ons. The smol­de­ring paper stem has bur­ned down, and somehow, I know the smoke will never taste bit­ter again.

♫ Mora​ve​c’s Para­dox ♫

27/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, illu­mi­na­ting the low vaul­ted cei­lings with my torch. As a talis­man, I carry the anci­ent „Scroll of the Hid­den Cham­ber“ with me. The dra­wings on the walls are faded, but other­wise com­ple­tely pre­ser­ved. I am loo­king for the pha​raoh’s car­tou­che. It must be here some­where. I deci­pher, „Behold my works, ye Mighty, and des­pair!“ Ozy­man­dias? But the tomb of Ram­ses the Great was alre­ady dis­co­vered here in the Val­ley of the Kings a long time ago! Per­haps one of his sons is buried here.

My musings are inter­rupted: A muf­fled sound cau­ses me and my Egyp­tian hel­pers to whirl around. The ground beneath us trem­bles. The gigan­tic stone slab, whose pur­pose we had puz­zled over during the excava­tion, has slid down behind us. The ent­rance is sea­led. Even with dyna­mite, we would­n’t be able to get out now.

My hel­pers, after a brief, despe­rate panic, col­lapse to the ground, whim­pe­ring. I, howe­ver, walk on. An unope­ned tomb that has elu­ded grave rob­bers for mil­len­nia – and I am the dis­co­ve­rer! As long as there is air to brea­the, I want to dis­co­ver if the burial tre­asu­res are truly untouched. Per­haps I will behold the hoped-for riches with my own eyes before my torch is extin­gu­is­hed fore­ver.

♫ Infi­nity Shuffle ♫

28/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor and imme­dia­tely jot it down in my jour­nal: „I enter the cor­ri­dor.“ Since I star­ted using a tablet ins­tead of a note­book and pen, I can record what I do and expe​ri​en​ce—how I spend my day—much more directly and in real-time. I can also share ever­y­thing important as a tweet right away. Before going to sleep, I can retrace my daily rou­tine on my Twit­ter account, divi­ded into small frag­ments.

What did I come in here for? Oh, right, I’m loo­king for the table​t’s char­ging cable. It says so right here: „I’ve mis­pla­ced the tablet char­ger. Maybe it’s in the kit­chen.“ I can’t find it any­where in the kit­chen. „But in the kit­chen, I can’t find it…“ But now the tablet makes a strange elec­tro­nic noise, drop­ping in pitch, like a dis­ap­poin­ted „Oohch.“ I’d love to note and tweet that, since I’m hea­ring it for the first time and it obviously needs to be docu­men­ted, but now the thing won’t accept input on the vir­tual key­board; ins­tead, it saves the text as a last-resort emer­gency mea­sure and shuts down.

What now?! How am I sup­po­sed to write this down? In the kit­chen, the​re’s a roll of paper towels, and in a dra­wer, I find a pen next to some tealights. I need to record all of this! But the pen won’t write on the paper towel. I lick it, shake it, the whole nine yards, but it just won’t work. All of this is at risk of being lost because I can’t write it down. My eyes fall on the cut­ting board. Could I carve some­thing into it with a knife? At least some key­words? So much has hap­pened alre­ady. Prep­ping paper towels, licking the pen, con­side­ring the cut­ting board… How am I sup­po­sed to remem­ber all of this? And on top of that, try­ing to memo­rize the act of memo­ri­zing! I need to find that cable; that much is clear. All my thoughts, the exci­te­ment, my action​s​—​just when things are finally get­ting dra­ma­tic and life is really pop­ping off, I can’t write it down, let alone tweet it!

I finally dis­co­ver the char­ger while sear­ching for a pen and paper in the bed­room, plug­ged into the out­let by the night­stand. With fin­gers alre­ady trembling slightly, I plug it in, and the tablet comes back to life.

I type as fast as I can to catch up with my life again.

♫ Game­LAN-Party ♫

29/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor—the one desi­gned to boost my short prose blog’s Google ran­king, plung­ing right into a search engine-opti­mi­zed, or SEO, copy. This text aims not so much at its rea­ders but pri­ma­rily at Goo​g​le’s search ran­king algo­rithm, see­king to feign being infor­ma­tive by focu­sing on cru­cial key­words like „cor­ri­dor“ and „short prose.“ In rea­lity, its sole pur­pose is to repea­tedly and subtly insert and vary the search-rele­vant key­words (such as „short prose“ and „cor­ri­dor“) throug­hout its con­tent. The goal is to trick Google and its mys­tery-shrou­ded ran­king algo­rithm into belie­ving it’s a vital con­tri­bu­tion to the field (e​.​g., cor­ri­dor short prose or short prose cor­ri­dors), thus ear­ning a high Page­Rank and a cove­ted spot at the top of Goo​g​le’s search results.

Howe­ver, we must­n’t suc­cumb to a nar­row cor­ri­dor or tun­nel vision: Atten­tion-grab­bing web­sites should­n’t overdo the „cor­ri­dor“ key­word in their text, and defi­ni­tely should­n’t resort to repea­ting key phra­ses (e​.​g., „short prose, shor­test prose, ultra-short prose“) in white text on a white back­ground at the bot­tom of the page ad nau­seam. This is no lon­ger even con­side­red adver­ti­sing poetry or prose but sim­ply short­sigh­ted, because Google now pena­li­zes that with deva­lua­tion and rele­ga­tion to the lower, for­got­ten rea­ches of its search results cor­ri­dor.

In short: „Prose“ of this kind is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and plays into the hands of the com­pe­ti­tion. In other words, the cor­ri­dor is long, the prose short. Or, to put it even more blandly: Here you will find what you’re loo­king for and can finally fol­low your destiny (of which you pro­ba­bly had no inkling) and enter the short prose Kor­ri­do­rium.

♫ This Sud­den Hal­le­lu­jah Fee­ling ♫

30/398

Ich betrete den Kor­ri­dor. Einen Moment lang bin ich hier allein. Gleich wird mein Name fal­len, und ich soll raus auf die Bühne tre­ten. In dem Leih-Frack ist mir unwohl. Mit der Fliege am Revers fühle ich mich wie zum Kar­ne­val ver­klei­det. Ich schwitze in dem unge­wohn­ten Auf­zug, und als ich mir über die Stirn wische, sind da auch schon die ers­ten Schweiß­per­len. Oh Mann! An mei­nen Magen darf ich gar nicht den­ken. In was für eine Situa­tion habe ich mich da nur gebracht?

Dabei – führe ich mir vor Augen – habe ich doch jetzt end­lich die Chance, viele Men­schen zu errei­chen. Aber was soll meine Bot­schaft sein? Wie kann ich etwas bewir­ken, nicht nur in der Presse und der Blogo­sphäre, son­dern ganz hand­fest in der Welt?

Meine schweiß­feuch­ten Fin­ger umklam­mern den Zet­tel in der Frack­ta­sche mit den Noti­zen für meine Dan­kes­rede. Dies ist die eine von zwei Ver­sio­nen, die offi­zi­elle, die ich mit den Ver­an­stal­tern abspre­chen musste. Die andere, inof­fi­zi­elle, geheime, exis­tiert nur in mei­nem Kopf: eine Kampf­an­sage ans Estab­lish­ment, ein flam­men­der Auf­ruf gegen die all­ge­gen­wär­tige Pro­fit­gier und die gedan­ken- und gna­den­lose Plün­de­rung unse­rer Res­sour­cen – der lite­ra­ri­schen und mytho­lo­gi­schen, die unse­ren Kin­dern eine leere und lebens­feind­li­che Welt aus lau­ter Wort­hül­sen hin­ter­las­sen wird.

Vom Saal her dringt gedämpft Applaus zu mir. Gleich ist es soweit. Ich zer­knülle den Zet­tel in mei­ner Frack­ta­sche und inner­lich den mit den Noti­zen für meine Revo­lu­ti­ons­rede. Ich werde da raus­ge­hen, den Kor­ri­dor ver­las­sen und die Bühne betre­ten, um dann ein­fach das zu sagen, was mir ein­fällt – indem ich mit dem Satz anfange, den ver­mut­lich alle von mir erwar­ten, ob sie’s wis­sen oder nicht, und dann impro­vi­siere, wie ich es immer tue, immer schon getan habe.